


Okay

by pocketmumbles (livelikejack)



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Asexual Character, Asexuality, Demisexuality, Gen, M/M, One-Sided Attraction, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-29
Updated: 2014-10-29
Packaged: 2018-02-23 01:54:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,367
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2529707
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/livelikejack/pseuds/pocketmumbles
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>prompt: demisexual Liam and conversations with his best friend</em>
</p><p>“Do you…like any of the other girls?” Mason asks hesitantly. “Like, like like?”</p><p>“Nope,” Liam says with an easy shrug. “I just don’t really get crushes on girls, I guess.”</p><p>Warmth blooms in Mason’s chest. If his best friend’s like him, too, then there must not be anything wrong with him. “Okay,” he says. “Me, too.” Liam grins and knocks their shoulders together.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Okay

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mcjennjen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mcjennjen/gifts).



> The focus of this fic is Mason & Liam's friendship. The **Liam/Scott** is pre-pre-pre-relationship, and really just a one-sided crush at this point. So it's vaguely there, but also not really. There is also **background Brett/Mason** , but it's really just mentioned. Also, Danny exists.
> 
> Sydney (the PSAT girl) has no canon last name; I more or less borrowed her actress'.

Mason is eleven years old when he thinks something might be wrong with him. It seems like all of his classmates have a crush on Clarissa Stein, all but falling over each other to ask her to the fifth grade dance. (It’s all for naught, since her parents won’t let her go.) Clarissa’s nice, and she’s pretty, sure, but Mason doesn’t really see anything amazing about her. Not the way the other boys talk about her.

“Do you like Clarissa?” he asks Liam one day, crouched under the shade of a tree at recess and watching the girls play tetherball. Clarissa bats the ball around the pole and clean over the other girl’s head, jumping up and down in victory.

“Yeah, she’s nice,” Liam says, nodding. “She always helps me with math, too. She’s really smart.”

“Oh.” Mason tries to ignore the sinking feeling in his stomach. “So you have a crush on her, too.”

“Huh?” Liam says, turning to boggle at him. “Nah. I mean, she’s cool, but…” He shrugs. “I like being her friend. That’s all.”

Mason nods. “Do you…like any of the other girls?” he asks hesitantly. Not everyone likes Clarissa, after all. “Like, _like_ like?”

“Nope,” Liam says with an easy shrug. “I just don’t really get crushes on girls, I guess.”

Warmth blooms in Mason’s chest. If his best friend’s like him, too, then there must not be anything wrong with him. “Okay,” he says. “Me, too.” Liam grins and knocks their shoulders together.

 

“What about Tracy Wells?”

Liam shrugs. “She’s really good at basketball. She always says hi to me, too, she’s really nice.”

“You know she’s not just saying hi to you because she’s being _nice_ ,” Mason says, glancing sidelong at Liam.

“Huh?”

He shakes his head. “Never mind. What about Jordan Baker?”

 

Mason is fourteen years old when he _knows_ something is wrong with him.

He’s noticed boys for years, known he likes boys for ages, talked with Liam about it and gotten lots of supportive hugs for months, but now? Now something is definitely wrong with him, and it all started when he took a wrong turn on his first day of high school and walked into the boys’ locker room right as the lacrosse team was getting dressed after morning practice.

Liam won’t stop laughing at him, the unhelpful little shit. “Liam,” Mason whines, rolling around on his bed, “Liam, this is a _problem_. This is such a problem. I have a serious lacrosse problem.”

“A tiny part of me is insulted,” Liam says after he finally gets his breath under control again. “Since, y’know, I’ve been playing lacrosse my whole life and you never gave a shit before.”

“I was supportive!” Mason says. “I was so supportive. I went to your games and helped you practice and stuff. But Liam, you should’ve seen these guys.”

“They probably look the same as the guys I’ve been playing with for years.”

Mason shakes his head. “Nooooo. Liam, those were boys. These are _men_.”

Liam chuckles. “Mason, they’re just high schoolers. They’re our age.”

“The captain’s a junior,” Mason says dreamily. “An _upperclassman_.”

“Okay, that’s pretty cool,” Liam says. “You gonna go for it?”

Mason scoffs. “You kidding me? I’m just a freshman. He doesn’t even know I exist.” He glances over at the textbooks stacked high on Liam’s desk. “How’s Devenford?”

“It’s whatever,” Liam says, shrugging. “There’s this kid on the team, Talbot. Won’t get off my ass.”

“I could get on his ass for you,” Mason offers. Liam rolls his eyes and whacks him with his pillow. “But seriously, Liam,” he adds. “Be careful, okay? Really try to rein in that temper of yours.”

He watches Liam’s jaw tighten. “I’m fine, Mason.”

“Well, you know me,” Mason says. “I get worried when I can’t keep an eye on you.”

He can’t help but feel guilty when he finds out about the coach’s car. If he had been there to calm Liam down, then maybe it never would have happened. “They call it IED,” Liam mumbles, sitting in a hunched ball at the foot of his bed. “I’m starting at BHHS next semester.”

“Well, I’ll be there, so that’s good, right?” Mason says. He puts a careful arm around Liam’s shoulders, relaxing when he doesn’t shrug away. “It’s not that bad there. Did you know, _their_ coach got shot with an arrow last month? Some crazy hunting accident or something.”

The corner of his mouth twitches up, just for a moment. “Yeah, that’s pretty crazy.”

“You’ll like it there,” Mason says. “And you’ll be there just in time for lacrosse tryouts. You’ll make the team, easy.” He hesitates. “Did…did they give you anything to help with your IED?”

Liam nods, shuffling a small bottle out of his hoodie pocket. “I’m a pill popper, now,” he says unhappily.

Mason peers down at the label. He doesn’t understand any of the names, but he can always ask Dr. Geyer to explain them later. He taps the dosage. “Every day, huh?”

“Yeah,” Liam says, hunching a little further in on himself.

“Okay,” Mason says, and pulls out both their phones.

Liam frowns as he watches Mason set identical daily reminders on their phones. “What are you doing?”

“Setting reminders,” Mason says. “We’re teenage boys; there’s no way we’re going to remember every single day.”

“But…you…” Liam trails off, brow creasing somewhere between frustration and confusion. “You don’t have to do that.”

“Of course I do,” Mason says. “You’re my best friend. If you’re not okay, I’m not okay, so I’m gonna make sure you’re okay.”

Liam blinks at him, then tucks himself further under Mason’s arm with a tiny smile. “Okay.”

 

“What about Danny Mahealani?”

Liam laughs. “Just ask him out already, Mason. I could talk to him for you, if you want.”

“No way,” Mason says, sitting on Liam’s hand for good measure. “I’m way too young and scrawny. I’m not his type.”

“Well, you never know,” Liam says. “Can I have my hand back? I need to finish my English homework.”

Mason scoots over. “What about Sydney Andrews?”

“She’s nice,” Liam says with a shrug. “Kind of intense about school, though. I dunno, she’s pretty, I guess?”

He always finds nice things to say about people’s looks, ever since he figured out exactly what Mason was asking. He means it, even, but never really in the same way Mason does. It’s almost as if…as if they’re not really talking about the same thing. Mason tries not to think about how he feels like there’s something missing between the two of them. He should be able to understand his best friend, no matter what. “What about Scott McCall?” he tries.

“He’s good-looking, sure,” Liam says. “I mean, he has a girlfriend, so he must be attractive. He’s a good captain, too.”

There’s an entire essay between those last words that Liam won’t tell him. “Okay,” Mason says, and tries not to sound too disappointed.

Liam scoots closer to him, though, so he probably didn’t do a very good job. “It’s not what you think, Mason,” he says. “It’s…” He trails off, making a frustrated noise. “I want to tell you, really, but…”

“But you really don’t want to tell me, either,” Mason says. “It’s fine, Liam. You’re okay, I’m okay, we’re okay. That’s all that matters.”

Liam knocks their shoulders together, but his mouth still twists unhappily.

 

Mason is sixteen years old when he realizes just how wrong he was about everything.

Namely, werewolves.

 _Werewolves_.

He ignores Liam and Brett for two weeks straight and stays over at Danny’s house, commiserating about best friends and boyfriends who don’t tell them shit about the supernatural craziness that keeps happening to them.

“A lizard?” Mason asks, doubling over in laughter. “Seriously?”

“Had a tail and everything,” Danny says. “Paralyzed me at the Jungle. Worst cockblock ever.” He shakes his head, smiling fondly at the memory. “You should talk to him, though.”

Mason grabs another handful of popcorn. “I’m still mad at him. I understand why he didn’t want to tell me, but – do you know how many times he’s almost died and I couldn’t help him because I had no idea what was going on?” He shoves the popcorn into his mouth, crunching down moodily. “It’s not his fault, but-”

“Oh, no, it’s definitely his fault that he didn’t tell you,” Danny says. “Brett’s, too. Don’t go easy on them. But…” he pauses, glancing at Jackson’s username on Skype. “You should talk to them, though. You don’t want them to disappear on you before you have the chance.”

Mason swallows his popcorn as quietly as possible. “What happened to Ethan?” he asks.

“I don’t know,” Danny says. “If Scott knows, he’s never told me.”

Liam answers the door when Mason shows up at his house, looking nerve-wracked and worn out, and Mason feels even guiltier. “I’m sor-” he begins, but Liam crushes him in a hug before he can even finish.

“I should’ve told you,” Liam mumbles into his shoulder. “It’s my fault. You already got hurt-”

“I’m pretty sure everyone in this town’s gotten hurt by the supernatural at this point,” Mason says. He pats Liam’s back. “Video games?”

“So where’ve you been these past few weeks?” Liam says when they’re settled on the floor of Liam’s room, knocking into each other as they drive their cars down the racetrack. “Scott wouldn’t let Brett track you. Said it was an invasion of privacy.”

“Good,” Mason says, tossing a banana peel at Princess Peach. “I stayed over at Danny’s. Turns out we have a lot in common.”

“Oh, really?” Liam says. He lunges his entire body sideways and falls off the track anyway. “You should tell Brett that. It’ll make him nervous.”

Mason rolls his eyes. “It’s not like that,” he says. “Danny’s not my type.”

“But _Brett_ is?” Liam asks. Mason can’t tell if he’s wrinkling his nose at Brett or at his Yoshi getting stuck in a corner.

“He’s nice,” Mason says. “And his abs are amazing.”

“All of our friends have amazing abs,” Liam says. “Scott has amazing abs. _I_ have amazing abs. It’s just part of being a supernatural creature.”

“Well, maybe I’m just partial to Brett’s abs,” Mason says. “Not all abs are created equal, after all. Like, between Scott’s abs and Derek’s, one is definitely better than the other.”

“Yeah, Scott’s for sure,” Liam says, nodding absently as he turns Yoshi around from heading backwards up the track. “Good point.”

Mason zooms Toad across the finish line and stares at his best friend. He’d brought up Scott twice, completely unprompted, and actually prefers Scott’s physical features over Derek, Mason’s tried-and-true litmus test for male attraction? “Liam,” he says slowly, “do you like Scott?”

Liam finally sends Yoshi across the finish line. “What? Of course I like Scott.”

“No,” Mason says. “I mean, like, _like_ like him.”

“ _Like_ like, what are we, twelve?” Liam mutters. “No, I don’t _like_ like him, I just, like, like him. And, y’know, you said it yourself, he’s a good-looking guy.”

“You said that, actually.”

“Yeah, but you said it first,” Liam says. Mason shakes his head. “You didn’t?”

“Nope. You brought him up all on your own.”

“Huh.” Liam shrugs and goes back to the menu page. “Rematch?”

He doesn’t seem bothered, so Mason doesn’t push it. “I’ll go easy on you this time,” he says. Liam smacks his arm. “Hey! No hitting the human!”

 

“What about Kira?”

“What _about_ Kira?” Liam asks, digging through his locker for his history textbook.

“Well, she’s cute, right?”

“Yeah, sure. I mean, Scott liked her, so.” Two notebooks and Liam’s copy of _Pride and Prejudice_ flutter to the ground.

Mason stoops to pick them up. “Okay, what about Jared?”

Liam pulls his head out of his locker to stare at Mason. “The guy who pukes every time we go to an away game? You’re kidding, right?”

Mason shrugs. “Just trying to figure out your type.”

“I don’t _have_ a type,” Liam says, rolling his eyes as he jams his book into his backpack. He shoves the notebooks unceremoniously into his locker and slams it shut. “C’mon, the table’s gonna be full if we don’t hurry up.”

Mason follows Liam to the cafeteria. As always, Scott stands up from their table to wave them over, removing his backpack from the spot he’s saved for Liam. Liam slides in next to him, as always, his entire face lighting up with a smile when Scott passes him an apple he snagged from the lunch line.

Mason sits next to Lydia across from them, watching his best friend carefully. Liam hangs on to Scott’s every word, leaning in closer to him when he talks. When Scott tilts his head back to drink the last of his juice, Liam’s eyes follow the bob of his Adam’s apple before darting up to watch Scott’s tongue slide over his lips.

It’s the first time he’s ever seen Liam stare at someone like that. Liam’s caught him staring at various parts of Brett’s body more times than he can count at this point, but Liam himself never – huh.

“Hey, Liam,” he says quietly after Scott walks Liam (and Mason, by extension) to history class. “What about Scott?”

He waits for the flippant retort, or easy dismissal, but instead, Liam flushes red from the tips of his hears all the way down the back of his neck. He cocks his head, eyes unfocusing as he listens for something. Scott, probably, Mason guesses. “Um,” Liam says. “I, um-”

The bell rings, and Liam all but flings himself into his backpack to grab his textbook. Mr. Yukimura turns around from the blackboard, and Mason lets it go. He’ll wait for Liam to come to him about it.

In the meantime, he takes to the internet. It hadn’t been very helpful about the whole werewolf thing, but this isn’t a werewolf thing. This is a basic crush type thing. It takes a little bit of work – typing, “my friend never liked anyone before but now he likes this one guy what does it mean,” into Google doesn’t accomplish anything at all, unsurprisingly – but after falling down a rabbit hole of sexuality blogs, he somehow finds himself on a wiki page, staring at an article about demisexuality. He reads it once, twice, three more times, glancing between it and his notes about Liam. “Huh.”

Mason opens up another Google search on demisexuality, reads more blog posts, and combs through the comments. They vary, and some of them sound like no one he’s ever met before, but some of them sound exactly like Liam. “Huh.” He sits back in his chair, scrolling to the top of a thread and reading through the comments again, noting how so many of them are just declarations of relief that they aren’t the only ones who feel that way.

He hadn’t met another gay kid until the eighth grade, hadn’t met anyone actually out until he started high school, but he’d never really felt alone the way some of the comments seem. He hadn’t personally known anyone for a while, so it’d been lonely, but he hadn’t felt…invalidated. He’d known that there were others out there like him, and he’d find them one day. He’d…he’d always known he wasn’t the only one out there. Mason bookmarks the page carefully before exiting out and closing his laptop. He stares up at the dark ceiling for what feels like half the night, mind racing and sleep nowhere in sight.

He doesn’t really understand – well, he thinks he understands the gist of demisexuality, and asexuality, and the general spectrum, in terms of definitions and categories. But he doesn’t really understand the feelings behind it, what it’s actually like to identify that way. It’s more than a little terrifying to have it thrown in his face, how much he doesn’t understand his best friend. It’s a little terrifying to realize that he may never be able to fully understand. After everything they’ve been through –

Mason barks out a laugh. After everything they’ve been through, indeed. His best friend’s a werewolf, and he’s managed to understand that just fine. Compared to that, understanding his sexuality will be a piece of cake. “My best friend is demisexual,” he says out loud, testing the way the words hang in the air. It doesn’t feel awkward, it doesn’t feel pointed, it just feels like…it _is_. He nods to himself, rolls over onto his side, and falls asleep.

 

Mason isn’t sure how to broach the subject with Liam – he’s positive that Liam never looked up his own sexuality on the internet – but Liam ends up beating him to it, anyway. Mason shows up at his house to work on their geometry homework together, but Liam’s a ball of nerves the entire time.

Mason looks up at the snap of yet another pencil breaking in two under Liam’s jittery fingers. It’s the third one so far, and he opens his mouth to ask him what’s wrong when Liam slams the pieces onto the desk and turns to Mason with a determined face. “Have you ever, like, _thought_ about someone when you’re jerking off?”

Mason blinks. “Uh,” he says eloquently while his brain frantically switches gears. “You…don’t?”

“So you _do?_ ” Liam asks. Mason nods, mouth still hanging open, and Liam slumps over the desk in relief. “Oh, thank god. I thought there was something wrong with me.”

“Hang on,” Mason says. “Wait, so what do _you_ think about when you’re masturbating?”

“Nothing, really,” Liam says with a shrug. “Just kinda focused on how it feels, really. You know?”

Mason doesn’t know. “Okay,” he says, nodding along. “So…what changed?”

“I don’t know!” Liam exclaims. “It started off all normal, and you know how sometimes your mind just wanders ‘cause, like, who cares-” Mason doesn’t know. “-so I ended up thinking about lacrosse, and then all of a sudden I couldn’t stop thinking of…” He trails off with a cough. “Um.”

“Scott?” Mason guesses.

Liam actually slides off the chair and onto the floor. “I couldn’t stop thinking about him,” he groans, flinging an arm over his face. “Like, him, like, _there_ , like…”

“With you?” Mason asks. “Like, doing things…to you?”

“Crazy, right?” Liam says. He peeks over his arm at Mason. “Dude, what’s wrong with me?”

“Uh,” Mason says, sitting down next to him. “Liam, I don’t know how to tell you this, but that’s what I do basically every time I jack off.”

Liam sits up. “You think about Scott, too?”

“No, not Scott,” Mason says quickly. He tilts his head. “Well, maybe I will, now. But, no, I mean, I…always have to picture someone? It feels weird just doing it by myself.”

“Really?” Liam says. “I’d feel weird with someone else there.”

“But not with Scott.”

“I guess?” Liam tries. “I mean, maybe? I don’t know, it’s kind of new, I mean.”

“Hey, it’s cool, don’t worry about it,” Mason says, patting Liam awkwardly when he starts to hyperventilate. “You know, actually, I was on the internet the other day-”

“Wow, I never would’ve expected that.”

“Shut up.” Mason kicks him lightly before sitting back down with his laptop. He ignores the other bookmarks in his folder, skipping over the wiki page and clicking on the blog comment thread instead. “C’mon, read it.”

Liam rolls his eyes and leans closer to the screen. Mason watches his face change from mild annoyance to confusion to utter surprise. “Huh,” he says, sitting back. He looks up at Mason. “That’s – that’s exactly how I feel. That’s-” He squints back down at the screen. “Demisexuality? I’m…demisexual?”

“I found some other links,” Mason says with a shrug. “I’ll email them to you.”

“Yeah that’d be – yeah.” Liam sits back quietly while Mason sends the email. “You looked all that up for me?”

“’course I did,” Mason says. “You’re my best friend. I’m okay if you’re okay. We’ll figure it out together. Just like this geometry homework,” he adds, pulling his textbook towards him.

Liam takes the new pencil Mason hands him with a smile. “Okay.”

**Author's Note:**

> Come say [hi](http://pocketlass.tumblr.com)!


End file.
